Yesterday, I wrote here about columnist George Will’s strange disagreement with the massive scientific consensus on global warming. I say “strange” simply because Will is smarter than your average denier of climate science. Today, my target is bigger and includes lots of folks who are George Will’s intellectual lessers. Let’s start with the fact that both sides in the debate over global warming have one thing in common: Hardly anybody really wants it to be true that climate-change trends pose a a...

From time to time, this blog receives comments that wrongly label certain right-wingers as “neo-conservatives” — but I rarely bother anymore to correct such mistakes. Not all conservatives are neo-conservatives. Wikipedia says this: “The term ‘neoconservative’ refers to those who made the ideological journey from the anti-Stalinist left to the camp of American conservatism. Neoconservatives frequently advocate the promotion of democracy and promotion of American national interest in international affairs,...

A few weeks ago, I posted something here about a Gallup poll showing that identification of themselves as liberals was roughly equal to claiming that they’re conservatives among Americans in general. This finding was represented as an improvement for the liberal side, especially as time has passed since Republicans first succeeded in demonizing the L-word some 30 years ago. And now there’s THIS about another poll: A new analysis of Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll data finds a marked increase in the share of registered voters...

When gay people started coming out of the closet seemingly in droves, it was a shock of sorts to the status quo of American culture. But the novelty faded as the push for gay rights became commonplace. And now, most Americans favor the legalization of same-sex marriage. Similarly, the shock of transgendered Olympic athlete Caitlyn Jenner’s emergence in the public consciousness likely will fade with the passage of time. Meanwhile, however, some folks are having fits about the matter, as we see HERE: In the four days since Bruce Jenner...

On the 20th anniversary last month of Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City, syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts wrote this: Twenty years ago, the idea of anti-government resistance seemed confined to a lunatic fringe operating in the shadows beyond the mainstream. Twenty years later, it is the mainstream, the beating heart of the Republican Party. And while certainly no responsible figure on the right advocates or condones what he did, it is just as certain that McVeigh’s violent antipathy toward Washington,...